History

The first recorded bridge over the Golden Horn in Istanbul was
built during the reign of Justinian the Great in the 6th century,
close to the area near the Theodosian Land Walls at the
western end of the city. In 1453, during the Fall
of Constantinople, the Turks assembled a mobile bridge by
placing their ships side by side across the water, so that their
troops could move from one side of the Golden Horn to the
other.

In the years 1502–1503 there were plans to construct the first
bridge at the current location. Sultan Bayezid II solicited a design and Leonardo da
Vinci, utilizing three well-known geometrical principles, the
pressed-bow, parabolic curve and keystone arch, created an
unprecedented single span 240 m long and 24 m wide bridge for the
Golden Horn, which would have become the longest bridge in the
world of that time if it had been constructed. However, the
ambitious design was not approved by the Sultan. Another Italian artist, Michelangelo was also
invited to design a bridge for Istanbul. Michelangelo rejected the
proposal, and the idea of building a bridge across the Golden Horn
was shelved until the 19th century.

A smaller scale version of Leonardo da Vinci's Golden Horn
Bridge was brought to life in 2001 near Oslo, Norway
by the contemporary artist Vebjørn Sand, the first civil
engineering project based on a Leonardo da Vinci sketch to be
constructed. The Leonardo Bridge Project
hopes to build the design as a practical footbridge around the
world, including the Golden Horn in Istanbul, using local materials
and collaborating with local artisans as a global public art project. The
Wall Street Journal referred to the Project as a "...logo for
the nations." (WSJ, Nov. 5-6, 2005)

Hayratiye

Hayratiye Bridge (Cisr-i Atik)

In the early 19th century Mahmud II (1808-1839) had a bridge built a
bit further up the waterway, between Azapkapı and Unkapanı. This
bridge, known as the Hayratiye (Benefaction in English), was opened
on September 3, 1836. The project was carried out by Deputy Lord
High Admiral Fevzi Ahmet Paşa
using the workers and facilities of the naval arsenal. According to
the History of Lutfi, this bridge was built on linked pontoons and was
around 500 to 540 m long.

Cisr-i
Cedid

The first Galata Bridge at the mouth of the waterway was
constructed in 1845 by Valide Sultan,
the mother of Sultan Abdülmecid (1839-1861) and used for
18 years. It was known as the Cisr-i Cedid or New Bridge to
distinguish it from the earlier bridge further up the Golden Horn,
which became known as the Cisr-i Atik or Old Bridge.

On the Karaköy side
of the bridge, there was an inscription as a couplet by poet Şinasi saying
that the New Bridge was built by Sultan Abdülmecid I.
First to pass over the bridge was Sultan Abdülmecid, and the first
to pass below it was the French captain Magnan in his ship the
Cygne.

Toll

For the first three days crossing the bridge was free. After
that, a toll known as mürüriye was paid to the Naval Ministry. Toll collecting started
on November 25, 1845 and the toll was charged:

Free: military and law enforcement personnel, fire fighters on
duty, clergy,

Toll was collected until May 31, 1930 by officials in white
uniform standing on both ends of the bridge.

The second
bridge

This bridge was replaced by a second wooden bridge in 1863,
built by Ethem Pertev Paşa on the orders of Sultan Abdülaziz
(1861-1876) during the infrastructure improvement works prior to
the visit of Napoleon III to Istanbul.

The third
bridge

The third Galata Bridge, 1890-1900

In 1870 a contract was signed with a French company, Forges et
Chantiers de la Mediteranée for construction of a third bridge, but
the outbreak of war between France and Germany
delayed the project, which was given instead to a British firm G.
Wells in 1872. This bridge, completed in 1875, was 480 m long and
14 m wide and rested on 24 pontoons. It was built at a cost of
105,000 gold liras. This was used
until 1912, when it was pulled upstream to replace the now
genuinely old Cisr-i Atik Bridge.

The fourth
bridge

The fourth Galata Bridge was built in 1912 by the German firm MAN AG for 350,000 gold liras. This floating bridge
was 466 m long and 25 m wide. It is the bridge still familiar to
many people today that was badly damaged in a fire in 1992 and
towed up the Golden Horn to make way for the modern bridge now in
use.

Today

Detail of the break in the overhead lines for the trams between one
bascule (left) and the fixed part of the bridge. The Süleymaniye Mosque is in the
background.

The fifth Galata bridge was built by the Turkish construction
company STFA
just a few meters away from the previous bridge, between Karaköy
and Eminönü, and completed in December 1994. It was designed and
supervised by GAMB (Göncer Ayalp Engineering Company). It is a bascule bridge,
which is 490 m long with a main span of 80 m. The deck of the
bridge is 42 m wide and has three vehicular lanes and one walkway
in each direction. It has also recently had tram tracks re-added to it, allowing the Istanbul
Tram to run from Zeytinburnu in the suburbs near Atatürk International
Airport to Kabataş, a few blocks before Dolmabahçe
Palace. This bridge along with Trowse Bridge in Norwich and a number of railway bridges in the
United States
may be the only movable bridges in the world that also carry electrified rail
tracks.

It is a common argument that the bridge was not designed for
this modification, which was added later as a necessity. Laymen had
to make inspections of the bridge due to several engineering
problems, which caused a setback of many years because of the
discord between the supervisor and the contractor. The rest of the
bridge including the market area in the first floor opened to
common use in 2003.

Culture

The Galata Bridge was a symbolic link between the traditional
city of Istanbul proper, site of the imperial palace and principal
religious and secular institutions of the empire, and the districts
of Galata, Beyoğlu, Şişli and Harbiye where a large
proportion of the inhabitants were non-Muslims and where foreign merchants and
diplomats lived and worked. In this respect the bridge bonded these
two distinctive cultures. As Peyami Safa wrote in his novel,
Fatih-Harbiye, a person who went from Fatih to Harbiye via
the bridge set foot in a different civilization and different
culture. Apart from its place in fiction, the romantic appearance
of the Galata Bridge made it the subject of many paintings and
engravings.

All daily city tours in Istanbul include this bridge as it is
the passageway to the Old City of Constantinople.